With the strings recorded and the band's 2009 album, Waking Up, almost done, Tedder put his bandmates to task, asking them to take a month to really listen to what they had recorded and try to make it better.

Brent Kutzie came up the song's chord progression and their engineer put some drums on it. Tedder then came up with the catchy chorus that people are still singing nearly three years after its release.

"We just hit play and let it repeat and within a minute I had the chorus," Tedder told Radio.com. "The best songs are simple, the ones that last forever, that get ingrained in your head."

Though the song seems universal, the lyrics are actually about a trip Tedder took to London. But he knew to have a hit he'd have to make it less specific and more relatable to his audience.